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Andy Horning: You can fix government

We all know that our government is corrupt. What we apparently don’t appreciate is that:

• Our constitutions are on our side. We have all the laws we need to quash such corruption and live in peace, prosperity, justice and freedom.

• We the People have all the power and accountability in the application of those constitutions. We could sweep away ungoverned government and crony corruption in a single day if we wanted to.

The Indiana Constitution’s Article I, Section 25, is Hoosiers’ most important, ignored, underutilized and violated rule: “No law shall be passed, the taking effect of which shall be made to depend upon any authority, except as provided in this Constitution.”

This, like the federal constitution’s Tenth Amendment (“powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”), clarify and reinforce a crucial aspect of constitutional purpose and design.

To this point, legislation does not grant authority, laws depend upon authorization. And in this nation where we have no king to authorize himself (humor me), only constitutions authorize anything governments are allowed to do to us. So when it comes to government action, whatever isn’t specifically authorized is absolutely denied.

On the other hand, Article I Section I of our state constitution says “... that all power is inherent in the people,” which reinforces the federal Ninth Amendment, “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Constitutions are limits on politics, not us. So whatever isn’t specifically prohibited by constitutional authority, We the People are free to do.

We don’t have to call something “speech” to call it a freedom. Nor do we have to invoke religion rights to prevent government from forcing us to buy what we don’t want, or from prohibiting us from buying what we do want (see the federal Ninth Amendment). Most of your property tax, and the way we operate schools, are illegal (see Indiana Constitution, Article 8). Most taxation is illegal in the way it’s assessed and what it pays for. By our constitutions, a huge percentage of our prisoners should be freed, and the Federal Reserve Bank shouldn’t exist. All our military actions since WWII, and most since 1903, have been illegal. That’s just for starters.

To summarize, most of what politicians and the cronies who purchase them do today is not just destructive, immoral and stupid it’s also illegal. So don’t say that once lawmakers make a law it can’t be broken; they break laws all the time. They violate constitutions to write laws they like better. In fact, they often violate rules today that they wrote yesterday. Nullification of laws happens all the time; just not in a good way.

Why? Because of the phrase “... all power is inherent in the people.” Our politicians violate all our fundamental laws because we asked them to — over and over again and through many generations. We have what more than 90 percent of us voted for with a more than 90-percent incumbent reelection rate. We’re the ones who have chosen to nullify our constitutions.

The politicians are not the ones who’re out of touch. The disconnects between our words and actions, our wishes and our choices, are what create the violence, fear, insecurity and injustice that’s growing fast out of anybody’s control. We’re the ones who need to wise up. What we say with our mouths and protests is irrelevant. What we say to politicians with our votes is, “laws be damned, do what you want.” And our politicians comply.

In just a couple of hours, you could read both state and federal constitutions. They’re far shorter and simpler than any modern law, even forgetting intentional deceptions like the ObamaCare legislation. It is suggested we use our constitutions as a battle plan and our votes as swords. We have all the power and authority to clean up our mess, and it’s time we do it.

Andrew M. Horning is an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation living in Freedom, Ind. He was the Republican candidate for the 7th Congressional District in 2004, finishing with 44 percent of the vote. Horning writes frequently on classical-liberal topics and is an expert on the federal and state constitutions.